the_jackalope | Reading

Things, and also, stuff:

- NEW DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL TODAY!!! 🙌 🙌 🙌

- I did cancel the expensive hardcover in favor of the kindle edition and stupidly didn't think to check when the ebook actually becomes available. At midnight last night, I was refreshing my order page but the book was not yet available. A quick search revealed that Amazon releases things at midnight Pacific time, which I guess makes sense considering the location of their headquarters, and it saved me from staying up past my bedtime reading, but I was a little disappointed.

- Needless to say, not a whole lot of work got done today because I was READING. Luckily, I only had one meeting and that meeting doesn't require written notes, so...I answered emails and teams chats, but was otherwise glued to the book. ( minor spoiler from early on ) I'm sure I will have much more to say once I'm done reading. *g*

- Speaking of DCC, I learned the other day that the Avs' goalie, Wedgewood, is a fan (apparently he is a BookTok-er? or something?) and also last month, the Avs did a DCC-themed pet adoption night at which their mascot dressed up as Carl and all the potential adoptees were named after characters in the books. I can only imagine what the majority of people in that arena, who probably haven't read the books, thought was happening.

- Speaking of hockey, I am now kind of torn between rooting for the Habs and the Sabres, mostly because of Martin St Louis and being reminded about Mother's Day 2014 and also that if the Habs won it all there would be no White House invite to be grossed out by. I still think it's going to be Canes vs Avs in the end, and I guess I'd be rooting for the Canes, but that is a very unappealing final, imo.

- Once hockey is done, I will be able to catch up on SO MUCH TV: new seasons of Deadloch, For All Mankind, and Paradise, plus that surprise episode of The Bear that dropped last week and that new season (coming June 25th!), plus I still haven't watched s2 of Andor or Poker Face, and there's a new season of My Life Is Murder, as well! And I need to catch up on Abbott Elementary, too, and finish my Orphan Black rewatch. It is a lot!

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Current Mood: excited
Current Music: At the Beach, In Every Life - Gigi Perez

rachelmanija

I have been offline more than usual lately because the internet is off at my house and I've been unable to reach anyone who is not an AI, which went about as well and efficiently as you can imagine. The AI has decided that I need a new router and is mailing it to me with instructions for how to install it myself, because God forbid a human be involved. If that doesn't work, who knows what the next step is. I am beginning to suspect the only humans at the company are the CEOs and shareholders.

Meanwhile, I decided that I am spending way too much time doomscrolling, both intentionally and non-consensually. Not only is everything horrible right now, but the minute you get online you're personally informed of every horrible thing that happened anywhere, big or small or in between. Did some random dude murder his entire family anywhere in the world? You'll be informed of it, complete with heartbreaking photos of the dead kids. Did a child commit suicide anywhere in the world? You'll hear about that too, also complete with the awful story and heartbreaking photos! And that's not even getting into politics and the upcoming end of the world. I don't think humans are mentally equipped to live like that.

So I installed ScreenZen on my phone. It's one of many apps that will block both apps and entire websites. (Sadly it does not have the ability to block words.) I blocked everything I doomscroll on. I highly recommend this! I still get the news, as 1) I get a news digest emailed to me daily, 2) people will tell me the news in person whether I consent or not, but at least I'm not constantly marinating in global misery that I can't do anything about. Also, I now have more time to be useful in ways that are actually possible.

The result is that I have read so many more books than usual. I am completely behind on reviewing, also as usual, but with more books involved now. Perhaps I will post a poll.

rachelmanija

This novel has one of the most off-the-wall premises I've come across. In a near-future world much like our own, women who get pregnant also conceive a "fetal mother." When they give birth to their baby, they also deliver the fetal mother, then fall into a coma-like sleep. The fetal mother rapidly grows into an identical clone of the original mother, then EATS HER. This process is called rebirth. The new mother has the original mother's memories and personality, but is also endowed with superpowers for the first five years of her child's life: she needs almost no sleep, has super strength and fast reflexes, is filled with energy, and finds all child care and domestic tasks endlessly fascinating and enjoyable. In short, the new mother is the woman that mothers are supposed to be.

The main character, Vivi, is terrified of rebirth, and sees it as death. This view is very stigmatized, but might be more widespread than society lets on. She's reluctant to get pregnant because of it. When she finally does, something goes wrong with her rebirth. She didn't get new mother powers. Instead she slogs along, depressed and alienated, trying to care for her infant while she's still physically impaired from the pregnancy and actually needs sleep. She and her husband end up breaking up over this, and Vivi moves to Australia to live with her uncle, who runs a hobbling business.

Remember I mentioned this is near-future? The world has actually decided to do something about climate change, and so drastically regulated energy consumption. Hobbling is altering old machines to make them low emitters. The low-emissions world is less lavish: planes are rarely used, long-distance calls are brief, and only the very rich have unlimited internet. It's an interesting take on a world whose future seems much brighter than ours, but whose present is more similar to our recent past.

Vivi and her family are Indonesian-Chinese, and their cultures (including Australian) play into the book much as the near-future setting does: it's pervasive and interesting and very specific, which makes a nice grounded base for the incredibly weird rebirth stuff.

But Won't I Miss Me is a weird, fascinating, ambitious book with a weird, fascinating, ambitious premise. Great social commentary and issues of identity. I didn't quite love the ending - it felt like it needed either more setup or more payoff - but the book is still excellent and very original.

musesfool

Yesterday, I made both these and these lemon cupcakes. I did both with a whisk and I liked that they didn't require the stand mixer.

The first ones were quite different than a typical lemon cupcake recipe - they had ricotta and honey in them, and I used this fancy lemon honey I had and I think that was a mistake. The cupcakes domed brilliantly, but had a weird aftertaste I did not like and the only thing I can think that could cause it was that honey. I otherwise used sour cream instead of creme fraiche, and olive oil for vegetable oil, but neither of those things should have caused the weird aftertaste. So maybe I'll eventually work my way back to that recipe (chosen because I have ricotta in my fridge that needs using up) and use clover honey and see how they are.

I think the second recipe is going to be my go-to for lemon for now. The batter is a super weird texture - it looked like curdled custard, or maybe bad cafeteria scrambled eggs - but the cupcakes are moist and lemony, though I guess the real test will be how they taste tomorrow, since if I'm taking them to work, I'll bake them on Sunday and bring them to the office on Tuesday, so they have to be good for that long. I made this strawberry cream cheese frosting this afternoon, but it wasn't stiff enough to pipe (not a euphemism) since I only used 2 cups of powdered sugar (and still think it is pretty sweet), so I just dipped the cupcakes into it. (I also did not make strawberry puree, I used 3 tbsps of seedless strawberry jam instead.) The tang of the cream cheese goes well with lemon and also helps cut through the sweetness of the frosting, so it worked pretty well, I thought. Next week, though, I plan to make strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream, which is much less sweet. We'll see how it goes.

I also tried to make homemade bbq sauce but I did not like how it tasted at all, so I didn't use it. Next time maybe I will try something that has no tomato base at all. Regardless, I cooked both racks of ribs and they were delicious and I will be eating ribs all week. I also made my own cole slaw dressing again, and this time I liked it better because I added onion and garlic powder - it is mind-boggling to me that the recipe doesn't include that and the first time around I just let it go but come on. Season your food!

So this weekend was delicious but so fucking messy - I ended up with egg yolk, bbq sauce, frosting, lemonade, and hot pork juice (not a euphemism!!! the ribs cook for 3 hours wrapped in foil and then for the last hour you take the foil off and it is a precarious situation!) on my shirt, but not all at the same time, thankfully.

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Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Inside the NBA

celli

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lightreads

City of Others

3/5. Urban fantasy about a middle manager in a government agency in Singapore intended to keep the supernatural elements of society quiet.

Okay. Kind of Rivers of London but with a queer protagonist and far less voicey. Though it turns out the voiciness goes a long way to selling all the infodumping you need to do in a fantasy like this.

A good time, with a particularly interesting set of magical ideas. But I suspect someone made him cut, like, 25% of his manuscript or something, because there’s a lot of jerky pacing and weird gaps where I’m like ‘wait, we just met this person and now she’s a core part of the team and we all care about her? Did I miss something?’ Also, it’s all trying just that bit too hard to tie into a neat thematic bow (grief and letting go). Very debut, is what I mean. Naturally it is going to be a series; I might keep going, I might not.

celli

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musesfool

Since I know you all enjoy my ridiculous grocery delivery stories, this week boneless pork country ribs were on sale for $3/lb so I ordered 2 lbs for approximately $6. I figured I'd put one package in a pot of sauce on Sunday, and freeze the other for some later date.

Instead, I received SIX POUNDS of baby back ribs for TWENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. For those of you playing the home game, that made my grocery bill today $22 more than expected. That's just nuts. Also, since I was planning to put the boneless ribs in sauce, I did not purchase any bbq sauce, so now I guess I can try to make my own. I thought about doing Chinese bbq ribs instead, because I do have all the ingredients for that, but the racks are too big to put into a container to marinate. I might be able to cut them into smaller slabs and marinate that way, but that seems like a lot of extra work I was not planning on this weekend, since mostly I planned to test out a couple of new lemon cupcake recipes.

I think I mentioned that one of my co-workers requested vanilla cupcakes with strawberry frosting next time I'm in, and I thought I might also do lemon cupcakes with strawberry frosting since there will be a lot more frosting than cupcakes.

Anyway. I found a bbq sauce recipe that doesn't include ketchup - I tried one that did once and did not care much for it - so maybe I will do that. I also have a bag of cole slaw, so I'll make the dressing for that as well, and see how it all goes.

In better news, the Knicks just went up 3-0 on the Sixers in round 2 of the playoffs. Bing bong!

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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Mets vs Dbacks on tv

musesfool

Wednesday reading on a Thursday:

what I've just finished
Saint Death's Daughter and Saint Death's Herald by CSE Cooney, which I enjoyed. The first book is A Lot in terms of both worldbuilding and plot, but it's a fun ride and Lanie Stones is a fantastic character - a necromancer who has an allergy to violence. Her growth as a necromancer is really well done, especially when set against the various members of her family she tells you about over the course of the books. The second book is a lot more straightforward in terms of plot, which I found less enthralling, but the character work and worldbuilding remain fascinating. I couldn't find any info about whether there's going to be a third book, but I would read it if there were!

what I'm reading now
The Last Contract of Isako, the new book by Fonda Lee. I'm only 20 pages in so I can't say much about it one way or another yet, but Isako is a middle-aged lady contractor (possibly also an assassin?) in a far future world. I imagine this is going to be a "one last job" kind of thing? I don't remember the blurb, but I found Lee's Green Bone trilogy* excellent so I have high hopes for this.

*Second world East Asian-style mob story where the made men have what basically amount to Force powers. Very violent and most of the characters are morally gray at best, but I enjoyed it a lot.

what I'm reading next
Dungeon Crawler Carl book 8: Parade of Horribles. Tuesday! I AM EXCITE!

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Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Canes vs Flyers on tv

rachelmanija

An advance copy of a new book by Lois Lowry, author of The Giver and other classics. It is unfortunately basically the bad version of The Giver. In fact what it mostly reminded me of was

telophase's YA dystopia generator, which produces gems like Tweak: Sickness has been banned and the government controls shopping and Whimper: Cats have been banned and the government controls dancing the hustle. In the case of Building 903, books have been banned and the government controls popsicles. Yes, really.

In a future America ruled by a 200 year old dictator, books (ALL books), fiction, art, music, storytelling, playgrounds, live pets (robot pets are OK), free elections, religion, tattoos, matches and other fire-making tools, congregating in groups, iconoclastic clothing, travel, and eating meat or fish are banned. Old people, marriage, and popsicles are controlled by the government. Yes, really.

She leaned over, pushed the button that dispensed a frozen snack, and made a face when she saw it was green; she liked the orange ones better. But she peeled the covering from the green one and licked at it. I bet anything, Tessa thought, I could get Dad to invent a selector button so they wouldn't come out at random; I could choose orange. Or red: the red ones aren't bad. Then, though, the green ones would pile up, and it would be wasteful, I suppose, because no one would ever eat them.

To be fair, I'm just assuming the frozen snacks are popsicles. For all I know she's licking a piece of frozen broccoli.

Tessa's father and twin brother are supergeniuses. Tessa and her mother are just average. I did not care for this. Anyway, Tessa's brother vanishes and the book goes on and on and ON with nothing much happening. I skipped to the end.

( Read more... )

lightreads

Platform Decay

4/5. A good outing. Murderbot does a complex rescue in corporate space, and there are juveniles, terrible.

Things I like:

Getting a nuanced and varied look at just what life in corporate space looks like, particularly for average people. And how those people deal with the various kinds of violence and oppression that surround them. A lot of this was extremely sketchy and gestural before, but this book does a huge amount of background work on adding texture to the world.

Wells playing out some of the consequences of the governor module hack code being out there now in ways that the fandom has been chewing on for a while.

Murderbot getting to snark a bit on the ways that Preservation’s utopia is also sometimes really full of itself and incorrect about its own righteousness, as utopias do.

Emotional self-awareness (oh no, terrible, how could a murderbot have a worse fate).

So yeah, pretty good, even with the tragic absence of most of the usual main cast and crew.

musesfool

dear co-workers,

there is no need to text or call after 5 pm to schedule a meeting that is two weeks away (I already sent you my boss's availability and am holding those times, which I told you) or ask to be emailed some documents that 1. you should already have by nature of your position, and 2. you don't need to look at until tomorrow anyway. nothing is on fire! there is absolutely no reason this could not have waited until tomorrow.

no love,

me

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Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Mets vs Rockies on tv

rachelmanija

One day everyone in the world woke up with these words in front of their eyes, somehow inscribed in their inner eye: YOU ARE LIVING IN A SIMULATION. Simultaneously, a number of impossible things appeared on Earth, apparently to prove it: a frozen tornado, windows between continents, etc.

It's now seven years later. Those words still appear before everyone's eyes periodically. And tours have sprung up to take people to see the Impossibles, or at least as many as can be seen on a seven-day bus trip.

This extremely high-concept premise resembles that of The Measure in some ways: a world-spanning event, clearly real and equally clearly done by a more-than-human power, with immense existential implications, and with no one having any idea why it happened or why it happened now. But this is Daryl Gregory and he's very good with bizarre high-concept premises, and this book is excellent.

The other genre of When We Were Real is "set of random people thrown together" story. A number of the characters are, at least on the surface, straight out of a 1930s train story or a 1970s airplane story: two nuns, a rabbi, a pregnant woman, an elderly woman in a wheelchair and her devoted daughter, a set of elderly tourists, a person who's secretly dying, a person with a secret identity, a fugitive from the law. The only stock character it's missing is the cute child.

The many characters are very human and likable, with even the most frustrating of them having reasons for being the way they are; the annoying pregnant influencer's reason for being an annoying influencer turns out to be both sympathetic and heartbreaking. (Yes, it's partly to provide for her upcoming baby, but the real question is "Why an influencer rather than some other job?")

( Read more... )

The Impossibles themselves are excellent. My favorite was the time tunnel, where you can stay an infinite amount of subjective time (you get a home pulled out of your own history or desires, plus fresh-baked bread every morning) and emerge several hundred miles away, only a second having passed outside. But the flock of non-real sheep was pretty great too.

There's serious themes - existentialism, mortality, meaning, God, ethics, love - but delivered with a light touch. It's more plotty than I expected, given the quest/picaresque structure, and the story is very satisfying. You don't get answers to all the questions, but you do get a general outline as to what's going on and why. It's a very human and humane novel, of the moment but in a good way.

Content notes: Cancer. Plans for suicide due to terminal illness. Pregnancy and birthing issues. Violence.

musesfool

Hey, I have actually read a couple of books!

what I just finished
First Witches Club by Maisey Yates, which was cute and fast but relentlessly heterosexual. It's about 3 women whose husbands have left them coming together to learn that magic is real. The community building is nice. This is kind of a beach/airplane read, but it was the first new-to-me book I was able to stick with in a while.

The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It's kind of a picaresque about Tao, the titular fortune-teller, and the friends she meets along the way. It's pretty cozy, but things do happen in it.

what I'm reading now
Saint Death's Daughter by CSE Cooney, which I am enjoying. It's as if The Locked Tomb and Flora Segunda had a sunshiny necromantic daughter. I wouldn't have thought you could make necromancy twee, but Cooney sure does try.

what I'm reading next
Likely Saint Death's Herald, the sequel to the above. And then in just over a week, Parade of Horribles comes out and I will be reading that immediately.

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Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Mets vs Angels on tv

musesfool

I can't remember where I first heard about Russian buttercream, but I finally decided to try it out to see how it works. It is super simple: you whip 2 sticks/226g of room temperature butter until it is pale, add a pinch of salt and a tsp of vanilla, and then whip in a can of sweetened condensed milk a quarter of the can at a time. I knew it would be sweet (though not quite as sweet - or gritty - as American buttercream), and I knew it might have a caramel type of taste, so I chose to try these brown sugar/cinnamon cupcakes that are supposed to be filled and topped with salted caramel. Needless to say, I did not bother with all that. The cupcakes are not too sweet and the cinnamon helps cut through the sweetness of the frosting, so I think it works as a pairing.

The frosting did curdle, though (pic). I think maybe whipping it so long (I had to do it for more like 14 minutes than 5 - 7 to get it light) raised the temperature too much. There are tips on how to fix it, but since it was just an experiment and no one else is going to see them, I didn't bother. The frosted cupcakes are in the fridge, and I'm sure that will help. If you're looking for a super easy, pipeable frosting, this could be the one for you!

I also made myself a plate of nachos for dinner, and they were delicious but super messy, so not the best idea when I eat dinner on the couch every night.

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Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: post-Kentucky Derby interview

rachelmanija

This picks up when Danny's been Dreadnought for a while, and is getting a bit too into the violent aspects of the job. This aspect is quite well done - you understand what's going on with her, but it actually is a bit unsettling. Also, Valkyrja reappears, sort of; an evil techbro wreaks havoc; a TERF is threatening the world; and Danny works on her relationships.

I liked this more than the first book. Danny developed as a character and spent a lot less time being abused by transphobes. I'll grab the third book when it comes out.

The sequel isn't as good as the first book, unfortunately. I'd have been happy with more of Zax, Minna, and Vicky exploring the multiverse, but this book is much more plot-driven and Minna and Vicky only show up three-quarters of the way through. Half or more of the book is narrated by a new character whose identity I'll leave out as it's spoilery for the first book. She was fine as a character but her storyline was less interesting. Zax gets a new companion, and I did quite enjoy his adventures with her. I also enjoyed Minna and Vicky when they finally appeared.

But the plot-driven parts were less interesting, and the structure was really odd and not in a way that benefited the book. Instead of picking up where the first book left off, we get a retrospective summary of what happened some time after that point, then we get the entire backstory of the non-Zax narrator bringing her up to the point where she meets Zax in the first book, then it jumps forward and we get what's happening to her now, then we catch up with what Zax is doing now, and then, about three quarters of the way in, we finally get the story of what happened immediately after the first book left off. I think it would have worked better to tell the story more linearly. And also, to have much more Minna.

It's not a bad book and it does have some really good parts, but there are some baffling choices made.

lightreads

Wolf Worm

3/5. Historical horror about an illustrator hired to draw insects for a scientist’s book. But something is up in the woods around his North Carolina home.

Me: I’m reading T. Kingfisher’s bug horror.

My wife: I don’t know if I can read that one. Report back.

Me: I’m one-third in. It’s fine. She’s using some of the same moves I’ve seen her use before, gothic overtones, creepy staring animals. Nothing horrible has happened yet.

Her, a day later: How’s the book?

Me: You do not want to read this one under any circumstances.

Her: …Ah.

Yeah, I think I just do not like her horror. This is good at what it’s doing (insect horror, body horror) but it is just so over-the-top gross in a few places in ways that do not work for me. Her sensible spinster heroine is a highlight, as usual.

Content notes: Hoo boy. Insects, torture, captivity, body horror, mind control.

rachelmanija

A modern take on La Ronde: a novel in the form of twelve short stories linked by airplane trips. Each has a main character who meets the main character of the next story. A pilot has a brief fling with a journalist in Brazil; the journalist flies to Toronto to interview a writer; the writer flies to Seattle where she meets two of her fans; one of the fans flies to Hong Kong, and so forth.

The blurb says each meeting causes a ripple effect as they change each other's lives, but that's not actually what happens in many of them. Some are minor chance encounters, some are present at a crucial moment in someone else's life but don't directly affect it, and some are important encounters but those are the ones where the people have pre-existing relationships. Most of the characters are disconnected, discontented, and lonely, despite the literal connections they have in a six degrees of separation way; the only character who seems happy and is focused on the people they love is about to get hit with a terrible tragedy that's someone else's traffic delay.

As we go from person to person, we get to see the characters from different angles, and understand things about them that others don't. The pilot, who in his story was wondering what would have happened if his younger sister hadn't died in a childhood accent, asks his one night stand how old she is. She says 33, which is the age his sister would have been. But she has no idea of any of this, and when he doesn't reply she thinks he's fallen asleep.

There's an impressively diverse set of locales and characters, sketched-in but real-feeling; I knew we were in Delhi before it was stated just from the description of the air. The emotional tenor is a bit distanced and chilly. Overall it reminded me of Raymond Carver, but with less striking prose.

Szalay won last year's Booker Prize for Flesh, a novel which sounds really unappealing.

musesfool

So I haven't written anything fictional since about January 2024 and mostly haven't even had any ideas, and then one morning last week (maybe the week before? I'm not sure - what even is time?), I woke up and was like, I could write a short DCC story set pre-collapse where Carl posts to AITA about breaking up with Bea and potentially stealing Donut. I told

angelgazing about it and she was of course, very encouraging, and all, you should totally write that! But alas, I did not, though I did think about it longer than most ~ideas~ I've had over the last 2 years.

This morning, she texted me a link and someone wrote it! In a brief post on Threads of all places, but it was exactly that. And she was like, I only recognized it because you'd already told me about it! And I was like, see, I don't even have to write it because someone else already did!

Nice to know that even without writing anything, I am still tapped into the fannish hive mind. *wry*

In other fannish news: Ted Lasso season 4 trailer!!!! August 5th!!! I AM EXCITE!!!

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Current Mood: excited
Current Music: The Riversitter - Vienna Teng

musesfool

I meant to have the recs update done earlier, but I fell asleep and then I had to make dinner etc. etc. But it is done now:

unfitforsociety has been updated for April 2026 with 14 recs in 4 fandoms:

* 10 Heated Rivalry
* 1 The Pitt
* 2 Batfamily and 1 Batfamily/Avengers crossover

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Today's poem:

If your mirror breaks
by Joy Kogawa

if when you are holding a
hand mirror when you are
sitting in the front seat of a car
and the mirror breaks
you must stop everything quickly
step on the brakes
leap from the car

if when you are holding in
your arms a mirror and you
feel the glass sudden in your veins
if your throat bleeds with
brittle words and
you hear in the distance the
ambulance siren

if your mirror breaks into
a tittering sound of tinkling glass
and you see the highway stretch
into a million staring splinters
you must stop everything gently
wait for seven long years
under a sky of whirling wheels

if your mirror breaks
oh if your mirror breaks

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And that's a wrap on National Poetry Month 2026!

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Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Stars vs Wild on tv